Chap. XXXI
Ozieri.—A Refugee Colonel turned Cook and Traiteur.—Traces of Phenician Superstitions in Sarde Usages.—The Rites of Adonis.—Passing through the Fire to Moloch.
We entered Ozieri by a new carriage-road in the course of construction to connect it with the great Strada Reale between Sassari and Cagliari; such an undertaking being a novelty in Sardinia, and, of itself, indicating that Ozieri is an improving place. It is the chief town of a province, and contains a population of 8000, having the character of being, and who were to all appearance, thriving, industrious, and orderly. The streets are airy and clean, the principal thoroughfare being watered by a stream issuing from a handsome fountain. There are many good houses, and, including the cathedral, a large heavy building, nine churches in the city, with three massive convents. That of the Capucins, from its cypress-planted terrace, commands a fine view of the Campidano, as does the church of N.S. di Montserrato on the summit of a neighbouring hill.
The piazza, a large area in the centre of the town, was thronged with people, lounging and enjoying the evening air, when we rode into it, not having the slightest idea where we were to dismount. In this dilemma, observing among the crowd, through which we slowly moved, a serjeant of the Bersaglieri, distinguished by the neat uniform of his rifle corps, with the drooping plume of cock’s feathers in his cap, we addressed ourselves to him, having among our letters one to the Commandant of the garrison, which he undertook to deliver. Meanwhile, he turned our horses’ heads to a house in the piazza, kept by an Italian, with the accommodations of which we found reason to be well satisfied.
Mr. Tyndale describes the osteria at Ozieri as execrable, while, on the other hand, Captain Smyth speaks favourably of the locanda at Tempio. At the period of our visit the circumstances were just the reverse. The “Café et Restaurant de Rome” proved more than its titles implied. Fully maintaining the latter of these, it supplied us also with two good apartments. Mine was festooned with bunches of grapes hung from the ceiling, and heaps of apples and pears were stored on shelves—so there was no lack of fruit; while, much to our surprise, several excellent plats were served for supper, the master of the house uniting the offices of chef de cuisine and garçon. On our praising his dishes,—“Ah,” said he, rather theatrically, “Je n’ai pas toujours rempli un tel métier!”—“How so?”—“Sirs, I am a Roman exile; I have fought for liberty; I was a Colonel in the service of the republic,—and now I make dishes in Sardinia! But a good time is coming; before long, I shall be recalled, and then”—there would be an end of popes and cardinals, &c. He told us that many of Mazzini’s partisans had taken refuge in Sardinia. We afterwards met with another of them under similar circumstances. Unwilling to wound the feelings of a Colonel who, like the Theban general, was also our Amphitryon, we did not inquire under what circumstances our host had acquired the arts which he practised so well; suspecting, however, that our Colonel’s earliest experience was in handling batteries de cuisine. In his double capacity, he might have more than rivalled in the Crimea even our “General Soyer.” To recommend some liqueurs of his own composition, which certainly were excellent, he told us that Sir Harry Darrell, who was here the preceding winter, just before he was seized with the intempérie, prized them so much that he carried off great part of his stock.
In the course of the evening we had a visit from the Commandant. Among other civilities, he made the agreeable proposal that we should join a party formed by the Conte di T—— to hunt in the mountains south of Ozieri, following the sport for several days. This scheme suited us exactly, as it would lead us into the forest district of Barbagia, which it was our design to visit. Such is the warmth of the climate, that though it was now the middle of November, after the Commandant took his leave we sat to a late hour in our shirt-sleeves, with the casements wide open on the now solitary piazza, while I wrote and my companion was drawing. So employed, a strain of distant music stole on the ear in the stillness of the night, one of those plaintive melodies common among the Sardes, a sort of recitative by a tenor voice, with others joining in a chorus.
Among the many usages derived by the Sardes from their Phenician ancestors, one of a singular character is still practised by the Oziese, of which Father Bresciani gives the following account:—“Towards the end of March, or the beginning of April, it is the custom for young men and women to agree together to fill the relation of godfathers and godmothers of St. John, compare e comare—such is the phrase—for the ensuing year. At the end of May, the proposed comare, having procured a segment of the bark of a cork tree, fashions it in the shape of a vase, and fills it with rich light mould in which are planted some grains of barley or wheat. The vase being placed in the sunshine, well watered and carefully tended, the seed soon germinates, blades spring up, and, making a rapid growth, in the course of twenty-one days,—that is, before the eve of St. John,—the vase is filled by a spreading and vigorous plant of young corn. It then receives the name of Hermes, or, more commonly, of Su Nennere, from a Sarde word, which possibly has the same signification as the Phenician name of garden; similar vases being called, in ancient times, ‘the gardens of Adonis.’”
On the eve of St. John, the cereal vase, ornamented with ribbons, is exposed on a balcony, decorated with garlands and flags. Formerly, also, a little image in female attire, or phallic emblems moulded in clay, such as were exhibited in the feasts of Hermes, were placed among the blades of corn; but these representations have been so severely denounced by the Church, that they are fallen into disuse. The young men flock in crowds to witness the spectacle and attend the maidens who come out to grace the feast. A great fire is lit on the piazza, round which they leap and gambol, the couple who have agreed to be St. John’s compare completing the ceremony in this manner:—the man is placed on one side of the fire, the woman on the other, each holding opposite ends of a stick extended over the burning embers, which they pass rapidly backwards and forward. This is repeated three times, so that the hand of each party passes thrice through the flames. The union being thus sealed, the comparatico, or spiritual alliance, is considered perfect.57 After that, the music strikes up, and the festival is concluded by dances, prolonged to a late hour of the night.
In some places the couple go in procession, attended by a gay company of youths and damsels, all in holiday dresses, to some country church. Arrived there, they dash the vase of Hermes against the door, so that it falls in pieces. The company then seat themselves in a circle on the grass, and feast on eggs fried with herbs, while gay tunes are played on the lionedda.58 A cup of wine is passed round from one to another, and each, laying his hand on his neighbour, repeats, with a certain modulation of voice, supported by the music of the pipes, “Compare e comare di San Giovanni!”. The toast is repeated, in a joyous chorus, for some time, till, at length, the company rise, still singing, and, forming a circle, dance merrily for many hours.
Father Bresciani, La Marmora, and other writers, justly consider the Nennere as one of the many relics of the Phenician colonisation of Sardinia. Every one knows that the Sun and Moon, under various names, such as Isis and Osiris, Adonis and Astarte, were the principal objects of worship in the East from the earliest times; the sun being considered as the vivifying power of universal nature, the moon, represented as a female, deriving her light from the sun, as the passive principle of production. The abstruse doctrines on the origin of things, thus shadowed out by the ancient seers, generated the grossest ideas, expressed in the phallic emblems, the lewdness and obscenities mixed up in the popular worship of the deified principles of all existence. Of the prevalence in Sardinia of the Egypto-Phenician mythology, in times the most remote, no one who has examined the large collection of relics in the Royal Museum at Cagliari, or who consults the plates attached to La Marmora’s work, can entertain any doubt. But it is surprising to find, among the usages of the Sardes at the present day, a very exact representation of the rites of a primitive religion, introduced into the island nearly thirty-five centuries ago, though it now partakes rather of the character of a popular festival than of a religious ceremony.
The Phenicians worshipped the sun under the name of Adonis, while the moon, Astarte, the Astaroth of the Bible, and the Venus-Ouranie of the Greeks, was their goddess of heaven. The story of Adonis is well known:—how, being slain by a wild boar in the Libanus, his mistress sought him in vain, with loud lamentations, throughout the earth, and following him to the infernal regions, prevailed on Proserpine by her tears and prayers to allow him to spend one half the year on earth, to which he returned in youth perpetually renewed. Thus was shadowed out the annual course of the sun in the zodiac, and especially his return to ascendancy at the summer solstice, a season devoted to joy and festivity. In after times, this period corresponding with the feast of St. John the Baptist (24th June), that festival was celebrated in many parts of Christendom with bonfires and merriment,—usages adopted from pagan traditions. The practices of the Nennere, in the neighbourhood of Ozieri and other parts of Sardinia, still more distinctly coincide with the rites which accompanied the ancient festival.
It was the custom of the Phenician women, towards the end of May, to place before the shrine, or in the portico of the temples, of Adonis, certain vessels, in which were sown grains of barley or wheat. These vessels were made of wicker-work or pieces of bark, and sometimes wrought of plaster. The seeds, sown in rich earth, soon sprung up, and formed plants of luxuriant growth. These verdant vases were then called by the Phenicians “the Gardens of Adonis.” The ceremonies of the summer solstice commenced over night with lamentations by the women, expressive of grief for the loss of Adonis. But on the morrow, “when the sun came out of his chamber like a giant refreshed,” all was changed to joy; the garden vases were crowned with wreaths of purple and various-coloured ribbons, and the resurrection of the boy-god was celebrated by dancing, feasting, and revelry. The priestesses of Adonis led the way in a mysterious procession, bearing the vases, with other symbols already alluded to, and on re-entering the temples, dancing and singing, they cast the vases and scattered their verdure at the feet of the god. All the women then danced in a circle round the altar, and the day and night were spent in pious orgies, feasting, and revelry. It is needless to point out the close identity of the Oziese Nennere with these Phenician rites.
The worship of Adonis, under the name of Tammuz59, with all its seductive abominations, was one of the Canaanitish idolatries into which the Israelites were prone to fall. Father Bresciani considers these rites to be emphatically referred to in the indignant apostrophe of Isaiah:—How is the faithful city become an harlot!... ye shall be confounded with idols to which ye have sacrificed, and be ashamed of the gardens which ye have chosen.60 And again, in the prophet’s terrible denunciation:—Behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire... and the slain of the Lord shall be many. They that sanctified themselves and esteemed themselves clean in the garden of the portico61 shall be consumed together, saith the Lord.
Whether the learned Jesuit’s interpretation of these passages be well founded or not, we may add another from the prophet Ezekiel, not referred to by him, but of the application of which to some of these rites there can be no doubt. In one of those lofty visions, vividly portraying the iniquities of Israel, her idolatries and wicked abominations, the prophet’s attention is directed to the intolerable scandal that, even at the gate of the Lord’s house, behold there sat women weeping for Tammuz.62
“Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate,
In amorous ditties, all a summer day,
While smooth Adonis, from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz, yearly wounded: the love tale
Infected Zion’s daughters with like heat;
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah.”—Par. Lost, i. 447.
One of the remarkable incidents in the Sarde Nennere, just described, consists in the consecration of the spiritual relation between the compare and comare, by their thrice crossing hands over the fire in the ceremonies of St. John’s day. A still more extraordinary vestige of the idolatrous rite of “passing through the fire,” is said to be still subsisting among the customs of the people of Logudoro, in the neighbourhood of Ozieri, and in other parts of Sardinia.
Of the worship of Moloch—par excellence the Syrian and Phenician god of fire—by the ancient Sardes, there is undoubted proof. We find among the prodigious quantity of such relics, collected from all parts of the island, in the Royal Museum at Cagliari, a statuette of this idol, supposed to have been a household god. Its features are appalling: great goggle eyes leer fiercely from their hollow sockets; the broad nostrils seem ready to sniff the fumes of the horrid sacrifice; a wide gaping mouth grins with rabid fury at the supposed victim; dark plumes spring from the forehead, like horns, and expanded wings from each shoulder and knee. The image brandishes a sword with the left hand, holding in the right a small grate, formed of metal bars. It would appear that, this being heated, the wretched victim was placed on it, and then, scorched so that the fumes of the disgusting incense savoured in the nostrils of the rabid idol, it fell upon a brazier of burning coals beneath, where it was consumed. There is another idol in this collection with the same truculent cast of features, but horned, and clasping a bunch of snakes in the right hand, a trident in the left, with serpents twined round its legs. This image has a large orifice in the belly, and flames are issuing between the ribs, so that it would appear that when the brazen image of the idol was thoroughly heated, the unhappy children intended for sacrifice were thrust into the mouth in the navel, and there grilled,—savoury morsels, on which the idol seems, from his features, rabidly gloating, while the priests, we are told, endeavoured to drown the cries of the sufferers by shouts and the noise of drums and timbrels—
“... horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol.”—Par. Lost, i. 392.
This cruel child-sacrifice was probably the giving of his seed to Moloch63, fwhich any Israelite, or stranger that sojourned in Israel, guilty of the crime was, according to the Mosaic law, to be stoned to death. We are informed in the Sacred Records, that no such denunciations of the idolatries of the surrounding nations, no revelations of the attributes, or teachings of the pure worship of Jehovah, restrained the Israelites from the practice of the foul and cruel rites of their heathen neighbours; and we find, in the latter days of the Jewish commonwealth, the prophet Jeremiah predicting64 the desolation of the people for this sin among others, that they had estranged themselves from the worship of Jehovah, and burned incense to strange gods, and filled the holy place with the blood of innocents, and burned their sons and their daughters with fire for burnt-offerings unto Baal.65
There appear to have been two modes in which the ancient idolaters devoted their children to Moloch. In one they were sacrificed and consumed in the manner already described, a burnt-offering to the cruel idol for the expiation of the sins of their parents or their people. In the other, they were only made to pass through the fire, in honour of the deity, and as a sort of initiation into his mysteries, and consecration to his service. Thus Ahaz, King of Judah, is said to have “made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen.”66 And it is reckoned in the catalogue of the sins of Judah, which drew on them the vengeance of God, that they “built the high places of Baal, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Moloch.”67
In the case of infants, it is supposed that this initiation, this “baptism by fire,” was performed either by placing them on a sort of grate suspended by chains from the vault of the temple, and passed rapidly over the sacred fire, or by the priests taking the infants in their arms, and swaying them to and fro over or across the fire, chanting meanwhile certain prayers or incantations. With respect to children of older growth, they were made to leap naked through the fire before the idol, so that their whole bodies might be touched by the sacred flames, and purified, as it were, by contact with the divinity.
The Sardes, we are informed by Father Bresciani68 still preserve a custom representing this initiation by fire, but, as in other Phenician rites and practices, without the slightest idea of their profane origin. In the first days of spring, from one end of the island to the other, the villagers assemble, and light great fires in the piazze and at the cross-roads. The flames beginning to ascend, the children leap through them at a bound, so rapidly and with such dexterity, that when the flames are highest it is seldom that their clothes or a hair of their head are singed. They continue this practice till the fuel is reduced to embers, the musicians meanwhile playing on the lionedda tunes adapted to a Phyrric dance. This, says the learned Father, is a representation of the initiation through fire into the mysteries of Moloch; and, singular as its preservation may appear through the vast lapse of time since such rites were practised, we see no reason to doubt his relation, exactly as he treats on this subject after repeated visits to the island, even if the account were not confirmed by other writers, as we find it is. Bresciani’s recent work is almost entirely devoted, as we have already observed, to the task of tracing numerous customs still existing among the Sardes to their eastern origin. We may find future opportunities of noticing some in which the coincidence is most striking.